It was a crisp autumn day in 2002 when the Libertines arrived back in London to play the penultimate show of a 26-date tour at the 100 Club on Oxford Street. Their debut album Up the Bracket was due to be released in 10 days, and the band were the most talked-about in Britain. Though in a somewhat ragged physical state (surprising, we know … ), Pete Doherty and Carl Barât were keen to dispel some myths – and to enthusiastically spin a few more. Hunched so close around a tiny table that it was clear the duo had not encountered their friends Mr Deodorant and Ms Toothpaste for quite some time, they gave a long and colourful – and until now unpublished – interview that went on long into the evening ...

So this is the end of the first tour you've done where people know who you are.

Carl Barât: "They think they know who we are."

Pete Doherty: "We're playing to people who haven't seen us before. It's like, don't believe all that. Just put the record on, have a dance."

What were the last paid jobs you did before the band took off?

Pete: "Working in a bar. A cinema. Then signing on."

Was the recent story about you working as rent boys true?

Pete: "Yeah. It's in this magazine (gestures to a copy of a glossy gay magazine with their faces on the cover). It was always my ambition to be on the cover of a free gay magazine."

What was the interview about?

Carl: "It was about sex. I didn't tell them much. I haven't done very much …"

You don't get to have sex more now you're in a hot band?

Carl: "Not really. It's the same as before (noticing a photo on the venue wall). See that drummer there – he looks like Mr Razzcocks. I wonder what happened to him."

So who was Mr Razzcocks?

Carl: "Our old drummer!"

Pete: "He was born in Lambeth in 1933."

How did you meet him?

Pete: "We were doing a demo somewhere. I think it was Clapton, Hackney. We were recording this song Pay the Lady but we'd lost our drummer at the time. He was called Herbert. We'd had a big old tiff."

Carl: "He wouldn't lend us his drum kit either. He was a right … "

Pete: "So we were stuck at three in the morning without a drummer. There's this fella that was producing us at the time, right, in his tiny little studio and he held his eyes open with matchsticks because he hadn't slept since 1984. Anyway, he goes (whispered Irish accent), 'I know this guy called Paul Dufour, I'll get him down …'"

Carl: "And he came back and there was this big cloud of smoke and out of the smoke stepped this little funny man with glasses, wearing a red tracksuit and with a big biffter hanging out of his gob. It was Razzcocks."

Pete: "He was up for anything, was Razzcocks. He could play like a bastard, man. We were all on speed but he didn't need it. He lives in a caravan in New Orleans now."

Carl: "I used to go busking with him because he was as skint as I was. We'd go and stand down Waterloo Bridge with a guitar and a washboard."

Did you make much from busking?

Carl: "Absolutely fuck all."

Pete: "Then there was that time with Scarborough Steve [Bedlow, former singer/cohort]. It was about nine in the morning, a Sunday, and we'd run out of booze so he suggested we go out busking. He'd just had some of his teeth knocked out and had some temporary ones in. Falsies. We were all absolutely mangled by now and it was afternoon by the time we got down to the bridge. A boiling hot day. These Japanese girls walked past and said, 'Do Twist and Shout!', so we started singing: 'Well shake it up baby now', and when we got to 'You know you look so good', Steve's tooth fell out."

Carl: "It landed in an old Nescafé tin that we had as our pot. Then a car ran over it. Those girls were disgusted."

Britishness is clearly something that matters to you.

Pete: "People ask about it a lot because they see the certain things reflected in us. But that's all it is, a reflection."

Carl: "We are what we are."

Pete: "We're not like … what's the question?"

We're talking the quintessentially British aspect of the Libertines.

Pete: "We're not professing a policy of Britishness. The aim of our music is not to be British or American, but we do write about the world. We like all sorts. We like Django Reinhardt. Maybe it was an accident at birth. I mean, I could have been a Russian folk musician. Why – do you think we're excessively British?

I'm just trying to work out whether your professing of love for Chas & Dave, Hancock etc is done in homage or irony.

Carl: "It's just what you know, isn't it? It's all part of our language, who we are. It's what feels natural to us."

Did producer Mick Jones impart any advice?

Carl: "Be together. Watch your back. Try and avoid Kilburn."

Pete: "It's always advice connected to an amazing story. And he has a beautiful, romantic vision of London too. I asked Mick, 'So what made the perfect gig for you then?', and he said, 'Togetherness'. I don't think he meant with just the band either – but with the crowd too."

What's been the best gig you've done so far?

Pete: "Probably the first one we did when Steve was singing for us. He got us into loads of stuff. The Stooges, Billie Holiday – things we'd never heard. So we got this band together and we were doing a gig in a squat, but the electricity ran out after three songs, so we did it acoustic. It was a mad night, running up and down these stairways in a disused pub. Candles everywhere. It's a fish restaurant now. Just near Sadler's Wells."

Carl: "The Empress of Russia. A beautiful place. I couldn't believe it, walking around these old corridors with all these huge empty rooms. Amazing. Then Steve let all the skagheads in and they took over the place. They were like Begbie from Trainspotting – you know, the little psycho fella? It all turned a bit dark. We had to leave."

Pete: "There was this other squat we found. Sort of a leftwing arts hive that let us stay whenever we wanted. There were loads of cyber-geeks trying to bring down the system from within. Toothless Spaniards crapping in the front. Animals!"